Prosecution Ends Its Case On Pepper-Spray Testimony

By RONALD SMOTHERS

Published: December 13, 2000

NEWARK, Dec. 12—
The prosecution rested its case today in the federal trial of five Orange, N.J., police officers by introducing a statement in which one of the defendants said police officers assaulted with pepper spray a handcuffed suspect who later died in police custody.

Later, the defense highlighted its strongest point so far: the inability of the prosecution's experts to find any trace of pepper spray in the dead man's body tissue or on his clothes.

The prosecution alleges that the officers violated the civil rights of the man who died, Earl Faison, 27.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Ed Quinn, read from his report on a September 1999 interview with Officer Tyrone Payton, conducted before Officer Payton became a suspect in the case.

Mr. Payton told F.B.I. agents of the immediate aftermath of the chase and arrest on April 11, 1999, of Mr. Faison. Officers thought Mr. Faison fit the description of the suspect in the killing of an Orange police officer, Joyce Carnegie.

Mr. Payton, 34, told federal investigators that while Mr. Faison was on the floor of a stairwell in police headquarters, handcuffed and surrounded by several officers, someone sprayed pepper spray directly into his mouth and nose area. The prosecution has maintained that Mr. Faison, who had asthma, had a reaction to the spray.

Prosecutors have argued throughout the trial, now in its sixth week, that it was Officer Brian Smith, 31, who sprayed Mr. Faison. As the defense started its case, one of Mr. Smith's lawyers, John A. Young, called an expert who testified about the spray.

Cameron Logman, chief executive of Zarc International, maker of a brand of pepper spray, said that ''as long as you don't remove it,'' the pepper spray residue ''just sits there. It remains and is hard to decontaminate.''